LAUSD admits purging files on Miramonte child predator Mark Berndt

The Los Angeles Unified School District admits destroying documents on former Miramonte Elementary School teacher Mark Berndt, who was sentenced to 25 years in prison after pleading no contest to molestation charges. (File photo by Andy Holzman/Los Angeles Daily News)

Lawyers representing the parents of 15 children allegedly abused by former Los Angeles Unified school teacher Mark Berndt accused the district Friday of facilitating predators by destroying records and hiding their troubling pasts.

At a press conference outside LAUSD’s downtown headquarters, Brian Claypool of Pasadena-based Claypool Law Firm, said the district possessed reports of Berndt’s abusive behavior dating back to 1980, but sometime in 2008 school officials destroyed those documents along with complaints made against other teachers,

“They have an obligation to hold on to these records,” he said. “Without these records that these folks behind me destroyed, you can’t track these teacher child predators.”

Claypool expects the civil lawsuit against LAUSD to go to trial July 8.

Berndt was sentenced to 25 years in prison after pleading no contest in November to 23 counts of lewd conduct upon a child. The former third-grade teacher admitted to feeding students his semen in a “tasting game” and photographing them with tape over their eyes and mouths and cockroaches on their faces.

Sheriff’s investigators conducted a two-year investigation, authoring a confidential 512-page report. It was a recent civil court ruling that further outlined Berndt’s deviancy: exposed himself to students, enticed them to touch his penis and fondled girls’ genitals.

LAUSD spokesman Sean Rossall said the district destroyed the reports because in 2008 school officials thought they weren’t legally allowed to keep them. The so-called Suspected Child Abuse Reports were written by district staff and turned over to law enforcement before the school system decided it should destroy the copies.

However, Rossall said, LAUSD maintained separate records with information outlining the same claims.

“The school district does everything in its power to ensure we are protecting students, and the idea we would ever hide any information is simply untrue,” he said. “We have and will work to ensure the privacy of children is protected and at the same time the case is moved forward in a way that promotes healing and improves trust.”

But the state statute school officials say made them purge the files prohibits only their public disclosure, Claypool said, adding that the district had every right — and obligation — to maintain files on teachers who were repeatedly accused of sexual misconduct.

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When sheriff’s deputies investigating the case that put Berndt behind bars obtained his personnel file from LAUSD, it made no mention of his problematic history, Claypool said. The records indicating instances of reported sexual misconduct with potentially more than 100 victims had been destroyed, Claypool said.

Claypool said he suspects LAUSD officials were watching the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles’ sexual abuse scandal in 2008 when they chose to purge the files detailing the deviancy of Berndt and others.

“This is worse than the archdiocese,” he charged.

It’s not the only civil lawsuit over sex abuse in which LAUSD’s record-keeping policies have come into question. In 2012, former LAUSD teacher Paul Chapel was sentenced to 25 years in prison for molesting 13 kids. The former Telfair Elementary School teacher was allowed to keep his job after a 1998 trial ended in a hung jury.

Prosecutors based their 1998 case on testimony from a 12-year-old boy and on DNA evidence — saliva samples taken from the youngster’s underwear — that they said proved sexual contact.

After his release from jail, Chapel was transferred, and teachers and students were unaware of his history.

Neil Anapol, a Burbank-based lawyer representing Chapel’s victims in a civil lawsuit, said he’s disturbed by the district’s administrative policy. Chapel had two separate personnel files — one with his performance evaluations that was kept at the school and another containing his troubling past. The incriminating information was filed away at LAUSD headquarters, where not even Chapel’s principal or other high-ranking administrators could access it, despite attempts to do so after a report of abuse was made.

Miramonte attorney Claypool has called for a federal investigation of LAUSD’s record keeping.

“We have to have a federal, criminal investigation of this destruction of records,” he said, noting he would press the United States Department of Justice to look into the matter.

DOJ and U.S. Attorney spokesman Thom Mrozek declined to comment.

In the meantime, Claypool said he is fighting district lawyers who want to keep documents in the civil case away from the public, adding he hopes the judge will lift a seal on certain records showing the breadth of Berndt’s history.